Aidan Smith: Bring your own ball, the SPL one’s burst

Redistributive financial practices have been suggested in wake of Rangers' financial turmoil. Picture: SNS

In 1973 the mood was one of pride. The domestic game was in good health, Lisbon was still fresh in the memory and the SFA had made it to 100. So my father, football fan and telly producer, was commissed by BBC Scotland to make Bring Your Own Ball. He interviewed Busby, Shankly and Stein, asking of Big Jock: “Are you a disciplinarian?” Some years later, Hugh McIlvanney’s series on the great mining-stock triumvirate used the clip and hearing Dad from beyond the grave made his two sons simultaneously sit bold upright, me in Edinburgh and my brother in Cambridge. We’ve used his probing inquiry as a greeting ever since.

Last week, of course, there was nothing to celebrate. Thus the graphics, in the style of an official stamp, suggested “Condemned” or “Fail”. And you knew it was serious when everyone got called back in the following night to be told there would be extra homework but, before then, a discussion.

Trying to look their best everyone wore a suit and tie, apart from the Kilmarnock fan in an open-necked shirt who said football had gone middle-class and, even at £20, had priced itself beyond the means of the working man with his laddie in the middle of a recession. An overhead microphone was used and the boom cast grim shadows on the suit-cloth. Were the key players aware that it looked as if a giant axe shaft was hovering above their heids? Some may have been shuffling in their seats in an attempt to avoid its swoop and wondering of presenter Rob MacLean: “Are you a disciplinarian?”

But SFA chief executive Neil Doncaster, bold as the brass of the association’s nameplate, said it was all very well if fans wanted an enlarged SPL but that would mean £20 million vanishing from football. Doncaster was responding to Alan Harris of Supporters Direct who was agreeing with Falkirk manager Steven Pressley on the issue of fans going unheard, not least on the reconstruction issue. Nine out of ten fans want a 16 or 18-team top flight, said Harris. But, obviously, an expanded league would have to be competitive. To achieve this there would have to be a redistrubtion of what we can still just about call the game’s wealth. At the moment a third of the total pot at the end of the season – about £5 million – goes to the top two teams and we all know who they usually are, although maybe not this term.

Was I aware of this? I hope I was. And I bet a few of you watching were shocked to discover how simple and deadly arithmetic can be. I wanted this section of the debate to linger on Celtic and Rangers but this didn’t happen. Of course they generate a lot of the wealth, and doubtless the key consequence of reconstruction – a reduction in the ancient Glasgow hostilities by 50 per cent – was what Doncaster meant when he quoted that £20m. But there wasn’t just one elephant in the room here, there were four – one for each of the Old Firm games as things stand. No one was prepared to take them on.

But, elsewhere, there were good points, well made. SFA performance director, Mark Wotte, a plain-speaking Dutchman, said: “I see national team players who cannot use the left foot, cannot dribble. These are basic techniques.” He also described the organisational structure as “unbelievable complicated”. Rod Petrie described the ditching of the reserve league as “shameful”. St Mirren’s Steven Thompson said barging into the same centre-backs four times a season was “boring”. Derek McInnes, pictured, reckoned the First Division was the only league in the world where finishing second earned you precisely nothing.

I probably shouldn’t pick a top man from the debate – the over-emphasis on winning shiny cups is bad for you, don’t you know – but can’t resist mentioning Pressley again. Elvis could be damning: “Clubs are only interested in the short term and what TV money they can get tomorrow.” But, as a keen young manager trusting the kids, he was optimistic, too.

We’re going to be bringing our own ball for a while yet, though.